1. Field of the Invention
The present disclosure relates to a communication device setting apparatus, a communication device setting method, and a recording medium, which are adapted to perform various setup operations for communication devices correctly and efficiently.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, a communication device (communication interface) is required to carry out wired or wireless communications with an external device, such as a PC (personal computer), a server, a router or a personal digital assistant. In recent years, another communication device, such as an STB (set-top box), is also available. The STB is usually connected to a television set (TV) for accessing a predetermined server in a communication network and for receiving various services from the predetermined server.
In order to identify the communication devices individually, a MAC (media access control) address is assigned to each communication device. A MAC address is a unique identifier assigned to network interfaces (nodes) for communications on the physical network segment, and it is a universally administered address. A MAC address has a 48-bit data length. The first 24 bits of this MAC address identify the manufacturer that issued the identifier and are uniquely assigned to the manufacturer by the IEEE Standards Committee, while the remaining 24 bits are uniquely assigned to a device by its manufacturer.
When the above-described communication devices are shipped by the manufacturer, a MAC address is written or burned in a recording area (or a memory) of a network interface card of each communication device by the manufacturer. With the use of MAC addresses, the transmitting/receiving of various data between predetermined communication devices is enabled on the communication networks (including wired and wireless communication networks) through the Ethernet.
Furthermore, when communications of encrypted data between communication devices are carried out, key information, including an encryption key and a decryption key, is written or recorded in a recording area of each communication device together with the MAC address.
Conventionally, the operation of writing the setup information, containing the MAC address and the key information, in the recording area of the communication device is manually performed by a human operator. Because the above-mentioned operation is manually performed by the operator, the operator directly deals with the proprietary information specific to the communication device, such as the MAC address and the key information.
Furthermore, with respect the key information, the administrator has to take a long time to input to the communication device a secret key or a character string which is the source of a secret key. Because the character string or the secret key is input to the communication device by the administrator directly, it is necessary that the character string or the secret key is text data that is visible to any person. Hence, there has been a possibility that the character string or the secret key is illegally copied.
To eliminate the problem, International Publication No. WO 2003/101040 discloses a secret key management device which includes an encryption unit which encrypts a secret key based on device identification information that identifies a communication device, and a transmitting unit which transmits the secret key encrypted by the encryption unit to the communication device.
However, according to the conventional technique as disclosed in International Publication No. WO 2003/101040, the MAC address as the device identification information must be beforehand set to the communication device in order to allow the secret key management device to carry out the encryption communications with the communication device. This secret key management device merely stores the secret key, and does not store the MAC address that identifies the communication device. Hence, a setup operation for performing communications between the secret key management device and the communication device must be performed beforehand. In this setup operation, the MAC address must be manually input to the secret key management device by the human operator. Hence, there are problems in that a mistake in the input operation may arise, the number of man-hours of the manual operation may increase, and the management may become complicated.